Patel unveils £2.6bn national cyber strategy

The government is set to announce its new National Cyber Strategy aimed, it says, at protecting the country from attacks by hostile states and organised crime, while projecting “Global Britain” as a “world leader” in the field.

- KIM SENGUPTA

The programme, funded by £2.6bn allocated in the spending review, will carry out offensive operations against countries carrying out malign cyber activities and pursue criminals who are using the internet for ransomware plots to loot vast sums of money.

The new strategy has been presented as it is claimed that hackers, believed to be Chinese, have “fully weaponised” software vulnerability which is causing “mayhem on the web” through exploiting a flaw, Log4Shell, which allows them to steal data and plant malware.

Some of the world’s largest tech companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Google, as well as state agencies such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the US, have found some of their servers to be vulnerable. According to security firms, 37 per cent of the UK’s corporate sector has been targeted with illicit scans taking place to find weaknesses in their systems.